Tracking of webpage and clickthrough data provides valuable information about the interests of the people who access a webpage. Tracking also provides useful statistics related to webpage performance and content quality. Providing clickthrough and impression data for webpages and the links thereon is known in the art. However, such information is typically presented in formats and displays that are not as accessible and digestible as could be. In light of the value and interest in gathering webpage and clickthrough data, there is a need to present this data in a way that is readily accessible and digestible by those who desire access to it.
FIG. 1(A) shows a typical prior art display of webpage impression data. Many webpages currently contain counters that are updated every time a webpage is accessed. This information is provided in real time to any user who views such a webpage. In FIG. 1(A), the counter is at the bottom of the illustrated webpage next to a text line: “number of people who have visited our webpage.”
FIG. 1(B) shows a typical prior art view of clickthrough data. Referring to FIG. 1(B), observe that the data is displayed as might be expected of an initial attempt at presenting such data. The data is accessible via a table that corresponds a number of clicks to the names of corresponding links. The data of FIG. 1(B) could be presented on an electronic or paper print-out, and would typically be generated by one desiring to compile such information regarding websites that are owned and/or managed by the generator of the table. As such, a particular table display of clickthrough data may provide, as shown in FIG. 1(B), the total number of clicks on a particular link through a given date and time. Alternatively, it may display the number of clicks for a given interval. It may also provide the total number of clicks on all of the links, as shown, compared to the total number of impressions, which is often much higher, as shown in FIG. 1(B). The number of impressions divided by the total number of clicks is known as the “clickthrough rate.”
One difficulty with prior art displays such as that of FIG. 1(B) is the link name may not be readily identifiable to a human desiring to assess performance of a webpage. This is especially true when a webpage contains numerous links or links that have similar looking names. While ultimately links with unique Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) can be traced to a corresponding link on the webpage, this process may entail a brief look-up on the part of a human who is assessing the link. This need for looking up links can make assessment of clickthrough data a less convenient task than it might be.
Another difficulty with prior art displays such as that of FIG. 1(B) is that links that relate to each other are not displayed in such a way as to readily indicate the relationship. For example, there may be a content module on a webpage that provides information about weather, and provides content elements of “weather in the west,” “weather in the east,” “weather in the north,” and “weather in the south” (not illustrated). Each content element may then provide links to weather information in specific cities: “Seattle,” “Los Angeles,” “New York,” “New Orleans,” “Detroit,” etc. An adjacent content module may provide information about traffic, and be broken down similarly into regions and cities. As may be imagined, these links to city-specific information may look similar, and it may not be clear from a display such as FIG. 1(B) which links fall into which content modules. This group and subgroup information can prove useful for website owners and managers, however, because they may care about the performance of content modules as well as the performance of individual links. It may become clear, for example, that content modules displaying particular pictures or graphically arranged in specific ways perform better than other content modules.
Yet another difficulty with prior art displays such as that of FIG. 1(B) is that they do not provide clickthrough data in real time. Also, they are not configured to display clickthrough data that relates the times when particular links are clicked. In light of the above shortcomings in the art, there exists a heretofore unaddressed need to provide better displays of webpage clickthrough and impression data.